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> Electric Cars revisited

Environment

In 2005 I calculated that as a result of most of our electricity coming from coal burning; the inefficiencies involved in converting that heat to electricity; and the losses involved in transmitting and delivering that energy to the wheels; fully electric cars had a larger 'carbon footprint' than conventional, petrol driven, cars.

Quite a bit has changed since then. So in the light of the present popular enthusiasm for all-electric cars is this still the case? This time I took a different approach - comparing three 'real world' examples.

> Ireland

Travel

In October 2018 we travelled to Ireland. Later we would go on to England (the south coast and London) before travelling overland (and underwater) by rail to Belgium for a few days and then on to Berlin to visit our grandchildren there. The island of Ireland is mainly rural and not very densely populated. It was unusually warm for October in Europe and Ireland is a very pleasant part of the world. It's not unlike Tasmania, and in many other ways familiar, due to a shared language and culture. Yet it's history over the past few thousand years is labyrinthine in its complexity. Over two weeks we spent many hours in museums around both countries that share this island, fascinated. As a result, this article contains a long, yet much abbreviated, 'Potted History'. There are also smaller articles on fourteen of the towns we meandered between in our trusty rental car. If my spin on the history is no interest to you, you can avoid the verbiage and philosophising. Take a shortcut. I've put some of our photos into a Google Photos album, instead of making the article even longer:

> Central Asia

Travel

In the footsteps of Marco Polo

In June 2018 we travelled to China before joining an organised tour in Central Asia that, except for a sojourn in the mountains of Tajikistan, followed in the footsteps of Marco Polo along the Great Silk Road. In medieval times China lay hidden to Europe behind the veil of the terrifying Mongol Empire. Yet Venetians still traded in Chinese silk so at the end of the 13th century Marco Polo, with his father and uncle, followed the thread of silk all the way to China. After his return he became a prisoner of war in Genoa where he related his amazing experiences at the Court of Kublai Khan to Rustichello da Pisa who subsequently published them as the Travels of Marco Polo. The things they didn't know they didn't know so shocked and amazed educated Europeans that the Travels of Marco Polo is credited by some historians with initiating the European Renaissance and the collapse of monasticism, leading to the Scientific Revolution and the modern world. In Central Asia we too would learn things we didn't know we didn't know.

> Hawaii

Travel

We were there in February and had noticed that it was hot underfoot on Kilauea.

Less that 100 days later, on May 3, a 6.9 level earthquake shook the Island, damaging buildings we had stood in in downtown Hilo, including the Post Office. Several lava vents simultaneously opened east of the Kilauea summit and 2,000 people had to be quickly evacuated as poisonous gasses belched out.

Why is it always just after we leave that things get exciting?

See the May 2018 Addendum at the end of The Volcanos chapter at the end of the Big Island page...

> United States of America - 'middle bits'

Travel

In October 2017 we returned from the United States where for over six weeks we travelled through a dozen states and stayed for a night or more in 20 different cities, towns or locations. In these travel notes I've provided a separate chapter for each significant stop along our way, whether we stayed overnight or not. My notes have turned out to be very long but could well have been much longer - as it's a fascinating country that has so much history, culture and language in common with us that it's extremely accessible and interesting. Much of our time was spent in states that were for a short time in a separate country: The Confederate States of America. Thus slavery, The Civil War and its consequences loomed large there. By far the longest chapter is Andrew Jackson's Hermitage - Tennessee that contains an explanatory short history leading up to that period and beyond that informs many of locations we travelled to. Readers might like to 'cherry pick' chapters that could interest them for other reasons, like Graceland or NASA or the Grand Canyon, from the contents table.

> Japan

Travel

Here is the story of our 2017 Japanese sojourn, when we took a short introductory package tour: Discover Japan 2017 visiting: Narita; Tokyo; Yokohama; Atami; Toyohashi; Kyoto; and Osaka. Japan has been an important theme throughout my life. Their unconditional surrender came exactly four weeks before my birth, as a result of the first A-Bombs. So that my life spans the nuclear age, the cold war, the space race, Japanese recovery, détente, the digital revolution, biomedical science, and the rise of China. I couldn't help making one or two historical observations.

> Romania

Travel

Here it is at last. I've finally given up my fight with Google Pictures and accepted URLs the length of small essays, just so that I can store my images in The Cloud. The essay on Southern England uses the old Picasa image storage. But in the middle of writing this, a few days later, Google withdrew it and introduced their mega-URLs. Then, before I could get any further with a solution, I found myself in hospital. See below.

Anyway I hope this was worth the wait - particularly for those of you who like to travel and have not yet been to Romania.

> Luther - Father of the Modern World?

History

Continuing the religious theme, 2017 also marked 500 years since Martin Luther nailed his '95 theses' to a church door in Wittenberg and set in motion the Protestant Revolution. It's caused me to recall an exhibition in Germany in 2016 - Luther and the Witches - and to wonder how much impact this superstitious man might still have on my decedents, two of whom are German. My research and speculations made this article quite long enough. So if you're interested in the witch hunts Luther contributed to click on the linked album within and see the exhibition for yourself.

> Korea - addendum or: - How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb

Travel

The biggest news last year was on American Independence Day, the 4th of July 2017, when North Korea had launched a rocket that travelled vertically to reach an altitude of 2,802km (1,731 miles) well beyond the orbit of the International Space Station. Thus demonstrating that they could put a nuclear weapon into orbit, to strike anywhere on the planet. That N Korea is not bound by The Outer Space Treaty, the convention that prohibits putting these weapons in orbit, is a point the media seemed to ignore. Since then there have been even better performing rockets and an H bomb test. So in the new year I've brought this article up the list a bit and added a further update. Yet irrespective of these recent advances, not a lot has changed. As was already evident last July, it is now even more obvious that a land attack on N Korea would risk a retaliatory nuclear attack on the US or an indefensible ally like Australia and ,as ever, any solution needs to be diplomatic. But like Kubrick's Dr Strangelove, we've learned to 'stop worrying and love the bomb'. This is largely because of MAD - mutually assured destruction. So, strangely, I find I'm not too worried. Unless President Trump really is mad.

> Climate Change - a Myth?

> Through the Looking Glass

Energy

Fans of the Reverend Dodgson's (Lewis Carroll's) work will recall some 'weird shit' in Wonderland like: Alice growing and shrinking; a disembodied cat coming and going; and babies turning into pigs. These adventures are put into the shade by Alice's subsequent experiences: Through the Looking Glass. Recently I had to pinch myself to check that our screen had not somehow turned itself into Lewis Carroll's looking glass and sucked me through to the other side. Like one of their fanciful tourism advertisements I was told the Victorians are about to turn dirty coal (carbon) into clean green hydrogen (hydrogen). Modern day Alchemists indeed.

Twas brillig, and the slithy toves; Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe...

> The Meaning of Death

News

On the subject of death, I was subsequently restored to life after being dead for several hours.

'Really?' you say, 'dead?' What does: 'dead' really mean?

At one time a person who was no longer breathing; who had no heartbeat; was limp and unconscious; and failed to respond to stimuli, like being poked with a knife; or having their heart removed; was pretty certainly dead. Yet while a death certificate may well have been issued for me in the not so distant past, today we set no store by the heart or the lungs or even reflexes as indicators of life but rather the potential recovery of the brain and central nervous system.

Thus I was not actually dead. The colony of cells that is me remained relatively undamaged, still a viable living organism thanks to continuing oxygenated blood supply. In particular my brain was undamaged, so my mind could be restored to awareness when anaesthesia ceased.

> Skydiving

News

In an earlier brush with death, for my 70th Birthday Wendy took me at my word and bought me a voucher to go Skydiving. I've always wanted to try it and 75 is a limit for insurance. Not that I was likely to benefit from any insurance payout. Skydiving accidents are usually fatal.

> The McKie Family

History

This is the story of the McKie family down a path through the gardens of the past that led to where I'm standing now. Other paths converged and merged as the McKies met and wed and bred. Where possible I've glimpsed backwards up those paths as far as records would allow. In six generations, I, like most people, have 126 ancestors. Around half have become obscure to me. But I know the majority had one thing in common: they lived in or around Newcastle-upon-Tyne in England.

During that time Newcastle grew from a small port town into one of the World's most important and innovative cities. Thus they contributed to the prosperity, fertility and skill of that blossoming town during the century and a half when the garden there was at its most fecund.

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Travel

Hong Kong and Shenzhen China

Following our Japan tripin May 2017 we all returned to Hong Kong, after which Craig and Sonia headed home and Wendy and I headed to Shenzhen in China.

I have mentioned both these locations as a result of previous travels. They form what is effectively a single conurbation divided by the Hong Kong/Mainland border and this line also divides the population economically and in terms of population density.

These days there is a great deal of two way traffic between the two. It's very easy if one has the appropriate passes; and just a little less so for foreign tourists like us. Australians don't need a visa to Hong Kong but do need one to go into China unless flying through and stopping at certain locations for less than 72 hours. Getting a visa requires a visit to the Chinese consulate at home or sitting around in a reception room on the Hong Kong side of the border, for about an hour in a ticket-queue, waiting for a (less expensive) temporary visa to be issued.

With documents in hand it's no more difficult than walking from one metro platform to the next, a five minute walk, interrupted in this case by queues at the immigration desks. Both metros are world class and very similar, with the metro on the Chinese side a little more modern. It's also considerably less expensive. From here you can also take a very fast train to Guangzhou (see our recent visit there on this website) and from there to other major cities in China.

Fiction, Recollections & News

To Catch a Thief

(or the case of the missing bra)

It's the summer of 2010; the warm nights are heavy with the scent of star jasmine; sleeping bodies glisten with perspiration; draped, as modestly requires, under a thin white sheet. A light breeze provides intermittent comfort as it wafts fitfully through the open front door.

Yet we lie unperturbed. To enter the premises a nocturnal visitor bent on larceny, or perhaps an opportunistic dalliance, must wend their way past our parked cars and evade a motion detecting flood-light on the veranda before confronting locked, barred doors securing the front and rear entrances to the house.

Yet things are going missing. Not watches or wallets; laptops or phones; but clothes: "Did you put both my socks in the wash?" "Where's my black and white striped shirt?" "I seem to be missing several pairs of underpants!"

Opinions and Philosophy

Energy woes in South Australia

South Australia has run aground on the long foreseen wind energy reef - is this a lee shore?

Those of you who have followed my energy commentaries published here over the past six years will know that this situation was the entirely predictable outcome of South Australia pressing on with an unrealistic renewable energy target dependent on wind generated electricity, subsidised by market distorting Large-scale Generation Certificates (LGCs) (previously called RECs in some places on this website - the name was changed after their publication).